A pair of scientists from Kazakhstan believe that our species was designed by a higher power, alien civilisation that either wanted to preserve a message in our DNA or simply plant life on other planets.

Maxim A. Makukov of the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute and Vladimir I. Shcherbak from the al-Farabi Kazakh National University spent 13 years working for the Human Genome Project – a mission that hoped to map out human DNA.

Their conclusion was that humans were designed by a higher power, with a “set of arithmetic patterns and ideographic symbolic language” encoded into our DNA.

They believe that 97 per cent of non-coding sequences in human DNA is genetic code from alien life forms.

According to their research: “Our hypothesis is that a more advanced extraterrestrial civilisation was engaged in creating new life and planting it on various planets. Earth is just one of them.

“What we see in our DNA is a programme consisting of two versions, a giant structured code and a simple or basic code.”

They state that the sudden boom in evolution experienced on Earth billions of years ago is a sign of something happening on a higher level that we are not aware of, and that mathematical code in DNA cannot explain evolution.

Mr Makulov said: “Sooner or later … we have to accept the fact that all life on Earth carries the genetic code of our extraterrestrial cousins and that evolution is not what we think it is.”

Writing in the journal Icarus, the pair state that a message could have been planted by aliens so that they could revisit it at a later date, although a reason why has not been established.

They state: “Once fixed, the code might stay unchanged over cosmological timescales; in fact, it is the most durable construct known.

“Therefore it represents an exceptionally reliable storage for an intelligent signature.

“Once the genome is appropriately rewritten the new code with a signature will stay frozen in the cell and its progeny, which might then be delivered through space and time.”